The Tunnels are an owarai duo with a long history composed of Tokyo-born Takaaki Ishibashi and Noritake Kinashi. Both of them attended Teikyō High School where Ishibashi, the taller of the two, participated in baseball, and Kinashi participated in soccer.
They originated not as a manzai duo, so much as an ippatsu gag and monomane act. During the early 1980s, they became immensely popular with young Japanese audiences, appearing in several television shows, but their popularity exploded with their show The Tunnels' Thanks to Everyone. Many times they absorbed more than 30% of nationwide television viewers, a great feat for any television show. They then turned their attention to creating music, spawning a string of hit singles that also generated massive sales and attention.
They created many words and expressions that resonated with the youth of Japan included such as moto-kare and moto-kano, which are abbreviations meaning "ex-boyfriend" and "ex-girlfriend". Both phrases are still in popular use today.